Animal Learning Final

You are to write a 5-7 page, typed, double-spaced paper (12 font maximum, 1’’ margins all around (top, bottom, left, right)) on a topic related to animal learning. The format is meant to be fairly open-ended, but in most instances, the paper would consist primarily of a review of the literature in some area. In most cases, you will want to end the paper with a brief proposal outlining additional research that should be done and why. In some cases, the bulk of the paper could be devoted to development of a theory or to a description of research that should be done to find out more about the topic.
In choosing a topic, the first requirement is that the topic be related to animal learning. Generally these will be issues discussed in the course or in your book, but issues not covered or not covered in depth may also be fine. The second, and perhaps more important, criterion is that you pick a topic that you would like to learn more about. As examples, you could write a paper about conditioned inhibition; the current status and revisions of Rescorla and Wagner’s (1972) theory; application of principles of animal learning to human learning, e.g., PTSD or drug addiction; learned helplessness; stimulus control; choice; self-control; application of behavioral economic principles in animals; spatial memory; taste aversion learning; cognition in animals; evolution of cognition; language in chimpanzees, etc. At this point, the best place to start is your text. Look ahead at the chapter headings and do some reading in areas that look particularly interesting.
For those of you who would like to learn and include something about the biological bases of some form of animal learning, that may be possible, as long as the emphasis of the paper is on learning. If you are so interested, please talk to me.
Once you have chosen one or two topics, you should email me to determine if the topic will be appropriate, whether or not I think you will be able to find enough novel material, and whether or not I can indicate some relevant articles. The next step usually is to find references, especially good review articles on the topic. Your text may be a good starting point, as will an on-line search in PsycINFO or PubMed (reference librarians or I may be helpful here; being able to effectively search for articles in these data bases is critical for Psychology/Neuroscience majors). Once you have found good secondary sources, you can confirm whether or not the topic seems as interesting as it initially seemed and determine whether there is enough known about the topic to write a paper on it. The next step would be to find some (typically about 6-10) original research articles on the topic. This can be done by exploring the reference section of the review articles you have found, by searching in PsychINFO and PubMed, and by browsing through our journals on animal learning (see attached list). When you search on-line, I strongly suggest trying to get .pdf versions rather than .html when possible. Although the usual process is to proceed from review to original articles, the reverse process may also work, i.e., find an interesting article in the library or on-line and then proceed to find secondary sources. In either event, it is very important to start the process early, because you will almost certainly have to send for some of the articles that you want through interlibrary loan, i.e, Bates will not have all of them. This takes time!!
Once you have located and read some relevant articles, you should begin to get a feel for what aspects seem most interesting, most controversial, most complete, easiest to organize and write about, etc., so that you can begin to shape the direction of the paper. You may want to talk to me again at this point. You may also find that you now need to obtain more articles to help back up a point, or to take the paper in a different direction than you have originally intended.
In writing the paper, you will find it useful to pay attention to organization and writing style. Be certain that the paper is organized in a logical fashion. Be certain that the introduction sets up the rest of the paper so that the reader, me, in this case, knows what the topic is, why it is interesting and important, and what you plan to do with it. Before you leave one topic, be certain that the conclusions the reader is to draw are clear. Be certain that the transitions from one topic to another are clear. You may find it useful to include data and figures from some of the articles you have read in order to make a point. If you decide to do this, these should be appended at the end of the paper, and will not count toward the page-count. Finally, ending with a summary of the most important aspects and providing an evaluation of what needs to be done next will be very helpful. It is important to try and put yourself in the position of the reader. You are presumably the expert on this topic. You should be doing your best to teach the reader, me again, what you have learned by organizing the material for me, indicating to me what is relevant, telling me what to conclude, and writing clearly so that what you want to say is clear. To do this well, you will most likely need to write and edit several drafts (another reason to start early).
In citing references, you will want to use the American Psychological Association (APA) style. If you have taken or are taking Research Methodology (261) or Community Based Research (262), you should be familiar with this style. Basically, this style is referred to as the author-date method. Examples of citations within the text of the paper and in the reference section are shown below. Please pay attention to this sheet and follow this style as closely as possible. Most of you will find that learning RefWorks (an on-line bibliographic program) or Zotero (a free downloadable program) will be worth the effort, as it will format your articles for you automatically and correctly. You can find instructions for this on the Bates Library Web page.
The paper will be evaluated, i.e., graded on several grounds. First, I will pay some attention to whether the paper addresses a topic that is relevant to animal learning, is important, and enough is known about it. I will determine if the paper seems to adequately address what is known about the topic, i.e., does the paper address the recent key theoretical issues and findings. I will also pay attention to how well and clearly the paper is organized, argued, and written. Consequently, spending time to carefully edit the paper will be well worth the effort. Note: When you submit your paper on Lyceum, I also want you to submit copies of the articles that you used in writing the paper.
Please don’t hesitate to see me for help at any point in the process.